Chapter 29: In Better Hands Than Mine
I caught her before she hit the floor.
"Elsa!" I held her against me, her body limp, her head fallen onto my shoulder, my heart slamming. "Did you really have to—"
"Yes, I had to." She lowered her arm, her face unreadable. "She wouldn’t have stopped on her own, and you know that as well as I do. She’d have hurt herself, or hurt someone else. Don’t worry, she felt nothing. She’ll wake up with a headache, and that’ll be the end of it."
I looked down at Alice, unconscious in my arms, her face relaxed now, rid of the rage that had twisted it a moment earlier. And I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with Elsa. Because she was right, again. On every count. And that was the hardest part.
The high elf stepped forward, and at last pushed back her hood.
She was one, and you could see it at a glance. Long, fine ears, smooth skin of an ivory paleness, dark green hair falling to her waist. A face of cold, ageless beauty, that of a woman in her full prime and yet somehow timeless, her features of an almost unreal fineness. Tall, slender, a full figure her long robe didn’t quite manage to hide. Eyes of liquid gold settled on Alice, then on me.
"So this is the girl," she said, and her voice was low, measured, touched with an ancient slowness. "And the hero I’ve heard so much about."
Elsa turned to me.
"The high elves owe me a debt, Kuro. I saved their daughter, years ago now." Her gaze slid to the elf. "Today, I’m calling it in."
"And I settle it gladly." Sylwen inclined her head. Then she turned to me, and her tone grew solemn. "Hero. I swear on my name — Sylwen Thalorë, of the blood of the ancient houses — that I will watch over this child as one of my own. No harm will come to her under my guard. She will return to you stronger, and whole. This oath binds me before my people as before yours."
A high elf’s oath. I knew little of their customs, but I sensed, from the gravity in her voice, that these words carried more weight than any contract we could have signed.
"Thank you," I said.
Elsa came closer, while I still held Alice against me.
"There’s one last thing." She held out a folded sheet and a stick of charcoal to write with. "She’s going to wake up far from here, alone, wild with rage and fear. You know her better than anyone. You know how much she’s attached to you." Her voice dropped a notch. "I’ll be honest with you, because you need to understand. A girl like her, if she were truly kept from you, if she came to convince herself she’d lost you — she’d be capable of letting herself die. So write her something. Something she’ll find when she wakes, and that will hold her here."
I understood. I sat down on a rock by the roadside, Alice lying beside me, her head on my knees, and I set the sheet on my thigh.
I thought for a long moment. Then I wrote.
***
Alice,
I’m sorry for all of this. I promise you I knew nothing about it — you’ll be able to check that yourself when we’re together again, the way you always do, with that skill of yours that catches the smallest lie. So you’ll know that every word of this letter is true.
Yesterday, I spent the most beautiful day of my life. At your side. Counting the night, too. And you know better than anyone how much I needed it, right now.
Because yes, I need you, Alice. Your smile. Your impossible temper. You, in my life. That’s exactly why I have to go. Why I have to become stronger — strong enough that no demon, ever, can hurt you, or that smile of yours. Strong enough for us to build a future together. A real one. One where we’re both still alive, side by side, when all of this is over.
I’m writing these words with a heavy heart, to ask the same of you. I know it’s hard to be far apart. I know, because it’s hard for me too, at this exact moment, watching you sleep. But do it. For me. For us. For the day we find each other again.
Become stronger too.
Kuro.
***
I read it over. It wasn’t enough, and at the same time it was all I had.
I folded the sheet, ready to slip it into the envelope. Then I stopped.
"Wait. There’s something I have to do first."
I got to my feet, and I drew both my sabers.
"I want to know if I can trust her to you, in full safety." I looked at Sylwen. "Fight me."
Elsa let a short laugh out through her nose.
"You don’t know what you’re asking. Sylwen and I ran the same dungeons, in the same company, back when I still put teams together. And of the two of us, I wasn’t the one our enemies worried about." She shook her head. "You won’t touch her. Not once."
"I don’t doubt it." I tightened my grip on the hilts. "But I want to see it with my own eyes. If it’s about Alice, I have to see it."
I said nothing more. Deep down, I was doing it mostly for myself. I need something that truly forces me to let her go. Proof. Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll be able to.
Sylwen considered me a moment with her golden eyes. Then she tilted her head slightly, and laid Alice down gently against the rock, off to the side.
"As you wish, hero."
I didn’t wait any longer. I went all out, right away, holding nothing back.
"Infinite Arsenal."
Water burst up around me — five, six, ten spears forming in the air and beginning to spin, hissing, ready to fall on her from every angle at once. And in the same motion I threw myself forward, both sabers in hand, water already sheathing the blades.
"Dance of the Tidal Widow."
I came at her spinning, the liquid blade stretching toward her throat while, behind me, my spears all plunged together. It was everything I had. My speed, my dance, my arsenal, unleashed at once, without the slightest restraint.
Sylwen didn’t step back. She drew nothing.
"Domain," she said simply. "Anti-magic."
An invisible wave unfurled around her, like a swell you couldn’t see but felt pass through you.
And all my water fell.
The spears, the blade sheathing my sabers, every drop I’d called up — all of it collapsed to the ground at once, reduced to mere puddles. As if, within the radius where she stood, magic itself had ceased to exist.
But I was already committed, my sabers bare, and I didn’t stop. I bore down on her, the nearer blade streaking toward her flank.
She took a step.
"Yggdrasil’s Stride."
And she was gone.
No lunge, no speed — just that step, and the instant after, she was no longer there. I felt a weight, light, impossible, on the flat of my blade, and I looked up.
She stood above me. Balanced on a single foot, poised on my own saber still held out at the end of my arm, without the steel bending a hair beneath her, as if she weighed nothing at all. She looked down at me, perfectly still, her hands behind her back.
She opened her mouth, as if to speak another spell.
Then she closed it. Without a word. Because there was no need.
She came back down, as light as she’d risen, and stood before me again, hands behind her back.
And then I understood. The gap. The chasm between her and me. I hadn’t been losing a fight — I’d never fought one. She’d let me give everything, my arsenal, my dance, my speed, and she’d erased all of it with a word and a step, without ever having to fight.
My arms dropped. My legs gave, and I collapsed to my knees, both sabers slipping from my hands to fall into the dust beside me.
"I see..." I breathed.
And I did see. I saw that Alice would be in the best hands there were — hands capable of protecting her from anything this world might throw at her. And I saw, in the same instant, the whole road I had left to travel. The distance between what I was and what I needed to become.
I had to let her go. There was no more doubting it.
I stayed on my knees a moment, then gathered my sabers from the dust, stood, sheathed them, and finished folding the letter.
I slipped it into the envelope. And when I looked up, my chest tightened: Alice was already on the elf’s shoulder, unconscious, her long white hair hanging into the empty air.
I handed the letter to Sylwen, firmly.
"Take care of her." I looked straight into her golden eyes. "She’ll have a hard time of it, at first."
"I know," she said softly. "I will."
She inclined her head one last time, murmured an apology, and moved off. I stayed there, beside Elsa, neither of us saying a word. Watching the elf carry Alice away into the distance. Away from me. Her silhouette shrinking on the road, melting little by little into the morning light, until it vanished on the horizon.
I stayed still long after she’d disappeared.
Then, at last, I steeled myself.
"Let’s go."
Elsa, who’d been waiting for those words, took off down the road. And I threw myself after her.
